The present disclosure relates to providing positioning service, in particular providing location information of a transportation apparatus via a UAV network.
An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone and also referred by several other names, is an aircraft without a human pilot aboard. The flight of UAVs may be controlled either autonomously by onboard computers or by the remote control of a pilot on the ground or in another vehicle. UAVs have mostly found military and special operation applications, but also are increasingly finding uses in civil applications, such as policing, surveillance and firefighting, and nonmilitary security work, such as inspection of power or pipelines. UAVs are adept at gathering an immense amount of visual information and displaying it to human operators. However, it can take a great deal of time and manpower to interpret the information gathered by UAVs. In many cases, the information gathered by UAVs is misinterpreted by human operators and analysts who have a limited time window in which to interpret the information.
Location positioning system LPS is generally known in the art. Unlike GPS or other global navigation satellite systems, conventional local positioning systems don't provide global coverage. Instead, they use a set of beacons which have a limited range, hence requiring the user to be nearby. The beacons typically include cellular base stations, Wi-Fi access points, and radio broadcast towers. Nowadays, local positioning systems are often used as complementary positioning technology to GPS, especially in areas where GPS does not reach or is weak, for example, inside buildings, or urban canyons. Local positioning using cellular and broadcast towers can be used on cell phones that do not have a GPS receiver. Even if the phone has a GPS receiver, battery life will be extended if cell tower location accuracy is sufficient. Traditional LPS typically involve one of the following technologies: triangulation, trilateration, and multilateration.